THE OPENED DOOR
Revelation 3:7,8,12; 1 Kings 6:5-8
Those privileged to be with us in July will remember that this section as to Philadelphia was what our brother based his three readings on – “because thou hast a little power, and hast kept my word, and hast not denied my name”. With that in mind, I was thinking of the “opened door”. The Lord is presented here, and He said to John, “Write therefore” (Rev.1:19) and then he said to the angel of the assembly in Philadelphia, “write”. The Lord was dictating this as a letter to these dear ones to whom He has nothing critical to say. He would serve to bring us into the greatest of His thoughts. They are God’s thoughts, wonderful things that He has in mind, things that have never entered into the heart of man, the things that God has prepared for those that love Him (1 Cor.2:9). They originated in God’s mind; there could be nothing greater or better.
It is my impression that the Lord opens the door into those realms where we can not only look in, but we can enter in through the door and see, and be moved to worship and adoration as we look at these things and as they impress our souls. It is an opened door; that implies that it was once shut, but the Lord has opened it and He holds it open. I think that is the setting here. He says, “I have set before thee an opened door, which no one can shut, because thou hast a little power”. There were features which the Lord was looking for and took pleasure in finding, and if these assembly features are manifested, then the Lord has something more to open up to us. He has opened a door into a whole area that encompasses everything that God has in mind in purpose for you and for me. I would like to encourage us all to seek to be in a position where the Lord can open this door to us and we can go in.
In Kings, Solomon made the temple; it is wonderful to read about all the work that went into it. We read about the stones; they were all prepared before they were built into the temple, ready to fit in their places. They were all entirely made ready in the quarry before they were brought. The note (f) says ‘Or ‘built of stones whole from the quarry’’. The quarry is like our lives here. We are being formed and shaped, and there will come a day when the Lord will come. When He comes for any one of us, we as living stones will be ready to fit, right ready for our place. But then there is the thought of finding our place now. The scripture speaks about these chambers, starting on the lowest floor, and they get wider as they go up. Mr Coates speaks about the lowest floor being Christian ground, remembering the Lord and His death1. The Philadelphians were on that ground. God would help you to cultivate a desire for these things. If you have a desire for them, you can recognise that as the work of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit would work in your soul; you may be unconscious of it, but He would give you feelings and desires after Christ. If you put your faith and your trust in Jesus, then you are on this ground. God would present things to you that you might embrace them and go in for them. Such were the Philadelphians.
Then you go up to the second floor, the middle one, by winding stairs. That speaks of a developed, a more mature impression of divine things. It is not that you need to be old to enter into them; we touched in the reading about serviceability in young ones. He is looking for that, and He would open the way for our minds, our intelligence and our desires to reach out towards these things. You can understand the Lord’s interest in Philadelphia. The assembly in Philadelphia was on Christian ground and they knew the Lord. There was something very precious there. Philadelphia means brotherly love. That would be a feature that marked the Philadelphians, and I think it shows that they had gone up the stairs, in the type of the temple. They were at the second floor; they had made progress. They knew the Lord as Head. They knew Him as risen and they had a message from the Lord from heaven. The Lord has the key of David; it is like a master key to all these doors.
So the Lord, as it were, opens the door to the upper floor, the third floor. The third was seven cubits broad. Seven is often thought of as a complete thought; there were seven days that God used in creation in Genesis, there was the first day and so on to the sixth day, and then there was the seventh day. On the seventh day He rested. These other floors would mean something too, but the seven cubits would speak of the perfection of what God has for us. It is the top floor, there is no more. That is not to limit it, but it is to show how hugely embracing it is, beyond all that we could ask or think. God has this wonderful area of blessing through the opened door. These chambers around the house were places where people could dwell. In that well known Psalm 23, it says “Surely, goodness and loving-kindness shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of Jehovah for the length of the days” (v.6). David was one that had a great sense of the greatness of God. Some of the hymns that we sing are transliterations of what David actually said in prayer; hymn number 3 is an example. What an appreciation that man had of the great things of God. “I will dwell in the house of Jehovah for the length of the days”.
The Lord would say, Come up, here is an opened door, come through. I think that would be the sense; not just go through, but come through, come and see Jesus where He is; get an appreciation of that. We will live eternally in the place where He is glorified, but now He would desire to give us an impression of these wonderful things for us to treasure and to appreciate, truths that have been opened up. Comment was made in the reading as to the truth of the recovery, and of course that is truth that always was there, but we have been recovered to it. What is within this door always was there, it is all related to the purpose of God. There is nothing new in that sense. It is all in God’s purpose before time was, and He opens the door. What a blessed thing! You have to be on the second floor to get to the upper floor. There is progress, stretching out for divine things. Our daily lives are to be in total accord with what we enjoy in divine things and spiritual things. We get to the Lord Jesus and there you find the Centre of God’s universe. He can be your Sun and Centre too. He can attract you to Himself; what a great power is the power of attraction. We see that in Jesus; everything is to be held in attraction to Him, and as we are held in attraction to Him we would move beyond the area of responsibility into the area of privilege. It is a wonderful thing. What I have in my mind as to this opened door is the truth of the assembly – a Head in heaven and a body here. These are blessed truths to know about. Then the sonship of Christ, that He became Son; “I have to-day begotten thee”, Heb.5:5. These are wonderful truths; they are for all believers.
We touched on Timothy in the reading. He started as an individual and that is how it starts in us. We are to be concerned to have individual exercise, but as we move forward, the Lord would open things up to us. We enjoy what is collective in the service of God. And we do enjoy it! We have a sense of order in the service and we enjoy it. We gather in this scene to remember the Lord Jesus and to show forth His death; that is the ground on which we gather. Then we have a sense that He is living, He is not in death, He is the living One. It lifts us up from the scene in which we gather. We break bread in the wilderness, but our spirits are to be caught up. In our spirits, we would be lifted up and carried away into those wonderful realms. That is what we can enjoy in the service of God. We should appreciate it; we should set ourselves for it. I feel it is a test, because if Mr Darby could speak about his wandering mind, how much more could I say about that. That is what we are like, but perhaps we can take some encouragement from the fact that someone who was so committed and so gifted could yet be concerned as to his wandering mind. The enemy would like to dilute everything. If he cannot stop you, he would like to dilute everything so that there is no flavour left, but we have liberty to worship the Spirit. We have liberty to move into the presence of the Father. What hymns we have to help us. What impressions we receive as we get there. How wide they are! We can have an impression of what the Lord Jesus means to the Father. We can have impressions of the Father’s love, of the cost to Him to have you and me as sons in His presence like Christ.
I suggest that these wonderful things are beyond the opened door. It is right to desire to enjoy them, to stretch out for them. I think it would be right to say that you cannot see the upper floor until you are on the middle floor. It speaks about a winding staircase; as you move on there is progress, and as we move on, we have liberty to speak to God. Things widen out as we do that; we have been taught that as we address God in worship, it is not so much higher as wider, and you get the sense of the width of what God has in mind as you go through the door. Paul refers to knowing the length and breadth and depth and height, of knowing the love of the Christ which surpasses knowledge (Eph.3:18). That is an area beyond the opened door. The Lord Jesus wants you and me to be there to see these things. In our current condition there is necessarily restriction because of what we are, but one day we will have bodies of glory and we will be able to enter into the fulness of these things. What blessed things these are, and they are available for every believer. I think it has been suggested that the “little power” helps you go through the door. The saints at Philadelphia had a little power; you may say that power had lifted them from the first floor to the middle floor. They had had an appreciation of Christ and of His rights here that had lifted them onto the next level. The Philadelphians had moved up a floor as it were, but then there is this further thought set before them. The Lord has opened the door, and it says, no one can shut it. I think it would be right to say that the way the truth has been opened up in the last few hundred years is like the opening of the door. I am not suggesting that others did not enjoy it previously, but there is a sense that a door has been opened by the exercise of others. It has put us in a place where these things are known, and they are so wonderful, and it is consequential on “thou hast a little power”.
So if we are to enjoy the greatness of God’s thoughts that lie beyond the opened door, then we do need to be exercised. It is not that you can claim Philadelphian ground. Nobody can do that. It is the Lord that has to say to these assemblies. I think it has been suggested that if you take Philadelphian ground, it is perhaps a feature of Laodicea. They say, “I am rich and am grown rich and have need of nothing” (v.17). We do have need, but how much has been given to us. You look through that door and see the riches of God’s grace. What riches there are. You may go around a stately house, and in the rooms there are rich tapestries and famous pictures. There is a little barrier around the rooms to show you where you are allowed to walk, and you can look from a distance but you cannot get in there, you cannot touch. God’s thoughts are not like that. You are not just taking a guided tour beyond the opened door, but God wants you to participate in the things that are there. He wants them to affect our souls and our hearts and our minds. God wants us to be occupied with His things, these wonderful things that lift us up. It may be that we enjoy some of this in the service of God, but the truth is very wide. We can enjoy these things, we get some impression of them as we speak together of the grandeur of God’s thoughts in other meetings too. We sang about that:
“Thou leadst our hearts to that blest place
Where rest’s without alloy” (Hymn 178).
That is something that we will find there. It is a restful area.
These are wonderful thoughts, and they are all there to be enjoyed. That is how this is presented; it is presented as an opportunity; “I have set before thee an opened door”. The opened door is there for us to be exercised about. That is what the Lord wants to do, to engender in each of our hearts a desire to know something of the enjoyment and experience of these wonderful things. So if the opportunity is set before you, why would you not want to go upward? Why would you not want to reach out, to go forward into this wonderful realm that the Lord would set before us. He goes on to speak about the pillar. “Him will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more at all out”. That is the eternal day. When Solomon built his temple, there were two ornamental pillars. Men put big pillars on buildings to make them impressive. But God has these pillars, not to impress others, but for His own pleasure. God can look upon these pillars and they remind Him of all that was in His heart for you. If you are a pillar there, there is nothing more to find; it is all found in Jesus. “A pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more at all out”; there forever! I am sure we should enter through the opened door and stay there. We have our lives to live, but I think the Lord would desire that these things should be in our hearts.
The Lord speaks about “my God, and my new name”. These things show how much it means to the Lord Jesus to give you that opportunity to enter through the opened door. It is not the door of salvation. You have already entered in through that. You are on that blessed ground if you have put your trust in Jesus. But this is something beyond, it is more. These floors get wider the further up you go, and eventually through this opened door, God lays out all these blessings before you. It is everything. You could not encompass them in a lifetime, but then you will have eternity! Well, stretch out for these things. Take the opportunity to enter in as the Lord presents it.
May we enjoy that, for the Lord’s names sake.
Address at Grimsby
12 October 2013
R.W. McClean